What's Going On With Alibaba Stock Friday?

Alibaba Group Holding Limited BABA stock is trading lower Friday in line with broader index ETFs IShares China Large-Cap ETF FXI and KraneShares Trust KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF KWEB amid reports of China Evergrande Group seeking Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in New York on Thursday.

The move protects Evergrande’s U.S. assets from creditors while it works on a restructuring deal.

Evergrande’s filing comes amid growing fears that problems in China’s property sector could spread across the country’s economy as growth slows, SCMP reports.

Also, China’s growing Covid cases and new variant fueled concerns about the ‘third wave,’ especially when the country struggled to recover from the prior pandemic restrictions.

However, there are positive updates too. Alibaba Cloud revealed a digital human video creation tool called Live Portrait that can generate a video of a digital human with speech capabilities by uploading a photo and a piece of text or voice input. 

Live Users can apply Portrait in various scenarios s including livestreaming, chatbots, and corporate marketing.

As per a UBS survey, China will likely make steady progress in chip equipment self-sufficiency amid gradual market recovery amid ongoing geopolitical tensions.

The chip equipment self-sufficiency rate will likely increase in sectors such as etching and cleaning machines.

Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 2.47% at $88.41 premarket on the last check Friday.